The Rookeries of London: Past,
Present, and Prospective (second
edition; London: Thomas Bosworth, 1852), by Thomas Beames
There is a period in all languages, when words pass from the
mint in which they are coined, their questionable origin is forgotten, and they
are used among the current money of the realm of thought. We believe that such
is the case with the word Rookery. The uninitiated may ask its meaning,
and the philologist wish to know the stages by which it arrived at its present
acceptation. It would be wrong to call the dwellings of the working classes
generally Rookeries: in country villages they hardly lie close enough
for that; they are not high enough - sufficiently crowded; there is not the
same economy of space which The Legitimate Rookery demands.
[-2-] Doubtless there is some analogy between these pauper
colonies and the nests of the birds from whom they take their name; the houses
for the most part high and narrow, the largest possible number crowded together
in a given space, - common necessity their bond of union: though the occupation
of the different tenants varies, yet they belong to the same section of the
social body, having all descended to the lowest scale which is compatible with
human life. Other birds are broken up into separate families - occupy separate
nests; rooks seem to know no such distinction. So it is with the class whose
dwellings we are to describe. We must speak of the dwellings of the poor in
crowded cities, where large masses of men are brought together; where, by the
unwritten laws of competition, rents rise and room is economised in proportion;
where, because there is no restraint to check the progress of avarice, no
statute to make men do their duty, they turn to profit the necessities of their
fellow-creatures, and riot on the unhallowed gains which injustice has amassed
at the expense of the poor.
We must speak of human masses pent up, crowded, crammed into
courts and allies; here, as by a fatal attraction, opposite houses grow
together at the top, seem to nod one against one another, conspiring to shut
out the little air which would pierce through for the relief of those beneath.
We must speak of men and women sleeping in the same apartment, whom, in some
cases, not even the tie of relationship unites; of a married couple with their
offspring, who have already come to the [-3-] age of maturity, with a common
dormitory; and we ask, if a malignant spirit wished to demoralise the working
classes of the country, could he find a plan more congenial to his wishes? We
must speak of stories piled on stories in the older part of our towns; not each
floor, but each room tenanted by a family; in some cases the dormitory of
several occupants, thrown together without distinction of sex or age in the
chance scramble for the night's lodging, each swelling the gains of some
middleman, whose heart is seared by the recollection of his own poverty, and
who learns to grind as he was once ground by others…..
…… Are not these colonies Rookeries, if the description given
by the naturalist be correct? "A Rookery, a village in the air peopled
with numerous inhabitants: it is the nature of birds to associate together, and
they build in numbers in the same or adjoining trees." Rookeries they are,
if rooks [-4-] build high and lie thick together,
young and old in one nest. Colonies are wedged up, not so much because of
connection between families as by common wants and a common nature, and with
the fierce discord and occasional combats of the inhabitants. The tenants of
these Rookeries, like the birds from whom they take their names, have much in
common-want, with its offspring, recklessness; they the pariahs, so to speak,
of the body social, a distinct caste, yet not bound together otherwise than by
common wants-with their jealousies, discords, and antipathies; as if it were
not too true of them, as of others, that a man's foes may be they of his own
household.
A change has come over us. The rich have room, have air, have houses
endeared to them, by every comfort civilisation can minister ; the poor still
remain sad heralds of the past, alone bearing the iniquities, and inheriting
the curse of their fathers. Worse paid, do they breathe a purer air? Worse fed,
are they better housed than their ancestors ? Regent
Street attracts the eye! Rookeries still remain!
Various causes combined to produce them. Many, from the first, were intended
for the occupation of the poor. In the parish of St. Pancras, you have streets
of the class Rookery, which cannot be fifty years old; small houses are now
building which will soon become Rookeries.
A large class of
the genus Rookery, are very ancient houses, deserted
by those to whose ancestors they once belonged. The tide of
fashion - the rage for novelty - the changes of the times, have also
changed the character of the population who now tenant these buildings. In the
dingiest streets of the Metropolis are found houses, the rooms of which are
lofty, the walls panelled, the ceilings beautifully ornamented, (although the
gilding which encrusted the ornaments is worn off,) the chimney-pieces models
for the sculptor. In many rooms there still remain the grotesque carvings for
which a former age was so celebrated. You have the heavy balustrades, the wide
staircase, with its massive rails, or, as we now call them, bannisters; you
have the strong doorway, with its carvings, the large unwieldy door, and those
well-known features of the olden time, in keeping with the quaint and
dust-stained engravings which seem to have descended as heirlooms from one poor
family to another. [-17-] The names of the courts remind you of decayed glory,- Villiers,
In other parts of
Such are the general features of
…. Tan-pits, glue-yards,- the head quarters
of some odoriferous traffic,-subtract about seventy per cent, not only from the
comforts but the necessaries of life. If air and water be essential for beings
constituted as we are, Rookeries in such localities become dens of pestilence,
and the full pressure of poverty is here exposed, by the loathsome dwellings to
which it drives its victims. Men must be sunk indeed - desperate, reckless,
past power of redemption, we had well nigh said-who could tolerate such a
neighbourhood as the scene where they are to know the blessed influence of
wedded love, and which is to be pictured in their children's memories as the
place where first they saw the light. Suppose a man to marry, with some of the
usual aspirations of his kind,-with some love for, and interest in, the being
to whom he is united; allow him only the smallest particle of that romance
which ought to gild unions such as these, how soon must he lose every finer
feeling, how rapidly become demoralized by the loathsome attributes of a plague
spot! Moralists have ever ranked among the great panaceas of our kind the
hallowed influence of marriage, - how it destroys selfishness; what a stake it
gives a man in the welfare of his country; how it opens the heart to the wants
and feelings of others; what an object to live for; what benefit the country
reaps from well-trained families; with what cheerfulness the man who is happily
married goes to his daily work; what an aid to the sway of pure and sober
religion these home [-71-] sympathies are! How does the romance of affection
give a delicacy to the thoughts and refinement to the taste? All is checked, or
rather distorted in neighbourhoods such as these; we blot out from the
catalogue of God's gifts to men the holiest, the most precious of earthly
blessings. The body soon becomes enfeebled by inhaling a fetid atmosphere,
disease is generated, seizes hold upon some flaw in a weak constitution, makes
one for itself in the stronger frame, and the mind sympathizes, is clouded, is
driven to seek questionable relaxations, to purchase moments of forgetfulness
in intoxication; the image the man has drawn of the partner of his life soon
recedes before the figure of her who is a fellow sufferer with himself; the
annoyances with which he is surrounded leave their traces in his family and his
home; childhood's innocence seems a fable in such haunts, wedded love a
mockery, when poverty and custom assign for its enjoyments receptacles like
these.
[After a profile of several particular rookeries] Of other
Rookeries we may not speak. We will not pause to describe St.
George's-in-the-Borough, with its back courts, where the refuse of Ireland
vegetate ; or Kent Street,- the thieves' district,- which years since drew
forth the indignation of the topographist; or Pearl Row, St. George's Road,
Southwark; or Red House, Old Gravel Lane, Borough; or a lodging house for
thieves at the back of Holborn, where 100 thieves are to be seen, at eleven
o'clock at night, on an average, six sometimes in one bed ; or the lower part
of Bell Street, Paddington, for the lower class of thieves, such as
costermongers, &c.; or the courts and alleys leading out of Tooley Street,
City, all the courts inhabited by Irish thieves, &c.; or Rents Buildings,
York Street, Westminster, inhabited by pickpockets and juvenile thieves; or
many others which will suggest themselves to the reader.
Sufficient has been said to set at work those who are
willing to labour in the cause, to show what Rookeries are, to stimulate us to
remove them.
… We must know under what particular
evils the working classes suffer because of high rents and wretched dwellings,
before we shall have placed Rookeries in their true light,- before men will regard them, as they really are, the
pregnant causes of varied ills. We may begin the inquiry by asking under what
landlords such traffic exists; someone must be much to blame; men cannot thus
be traded with as though they were corn, molasses, indigo, or any other
marketable article, without some grievous neglect of duty,- of fair dealing, we
had almost said, - in some quarter.
Some of the most densely-peopled localities in London are
owned by men of great property and high rank,- some of the most wretched
streets in the metropolis, if you went deep enough to find the real owner,
swell the income of an opulent speculator who has bought them as a good
investment. In many cases they are the hereditary estates of some country
magnate, who maintains upon the proceeds his costly establishment of hounds and
horses; some, again, belong to Corporate Bodies, Public Charities; some to Deans
and Chapters, [-174-] to endowed Schools - in short, they are owned by various
landlords, whose occupations are of every description. Some of them have been
in possession of their present owners' family for two or three hundred years ; others have been more recently acquired.
You ask, - Are these landlords the recipients of the 5s. a-week per room or story, as the case may be? do their stewards superintend the repairs, take the rents,
levy distresses, in the name of their masters? In most cases they do not.
Originally, the landlords only leased the ground on which the houses were built
for a term of years; two hundred years since, great part of the West End of
London was in fields; cattle strayed - and it might be said in the words of the
poet,-
"Passimque armenta videri
Romanoque foro - et lautis mugire
Carnis ;"
the owners let out plots of ground for building at so much a foot for
ninety-nine years; at the expiration of these leases, the ground and the houses
erected on it came into possession of the family, and the descendants of the
original owner found themselves enriched.
In some cases, the property is encumbered with long leases;
so that the heir succeeds to an inheritance, with the wholesome control he
ought to exercise over his property alienated for half his life. A Middle-man
has bought a long lease, the father, or grandfather of the present owner having
received a fine as a premium; such binding hand and foot of the landlord's
duties as well as his interests, is indeed too common. Men enter upon [-175-]
these covenants, because such is the rule which all follow under similar
circumstances; which legal advisers recommend, which present necessities render
prudent, - much in the same lax and inconsiderate way in which oaths were
administered in the last century, without thought or reflection on their terms
or obligations. The system of long leases and heavy fines is unjust, fatal to
improvement, checking all reform, and giving a charter to the errors of our
forefathers; if it could be abolished, Rookeries would decrease. But suppose
the landlord to manage his own property; the collection of rents from many of
the tenants of these Rookeries would be difficult, tiresome, and from their
very number expensive. It would not sound well to hear that some man of
influence had distrained upon one of these hewers of wood and drawers of water;
the necessary communication between landlord and tenant would be next to
impossible,- in short, without tasking the imagination, we can readily suppose
some method of obviating these impediments would be invented. And most
injurious has that system been, which, to save trouble, litigation, and
notoriety, has been put in the stead of the natural relation between the lessor
and the lessee, which has broken a bond honourable to the one, invaluable to
the other. As things are now, we have a large class of Middle-men even in the
mildest form the case admits of; in many instances, the houses are let out, and
under-let again and again, so that there are several links between the owner
and the occupier - the [-176-] latter perhaps not knowing the name of the
former. No one supposes that a middle-man sees any abstract beauty in long rows
of dingy houses, or that there is anything peculiarly elevating in the occupation
of letting lodgings.
… There is, then,
the strong motive of gain in these transactions! The middle-man supposes that
he shall be more than indemnified for his trouble by subdividing these
tenements into floors, or the floors into single rooms; and if such an
occupation be lucrative, competition will increase in the same ratio; there
will be several middle-men in the field whenever a Rookery is to be let, the
ground landlord will have no difficulty in disposing of his houses. The only
questions with him are, who is the highest or the most
solvent bidder; this very competition puts money into his pocket. From what
source, then must the middle-man, who ultimately obtains the lease, be
indemnified for the high price he has paid? He must wring it from the hapless
poor who tenant the apartments which he lets out! They are the real victims.
… We admit then, I hope, that these
Rookeries are a disgrace to our age; that they have sprung up in part from
neglect, in part from the tide of fashion setting in another direction; that
unless legislation check them, by fixing the number of inmates to a house,
according to the number and size of its rooms, such things will always be. Our
selfishness may be alarmed by fevers there [-217-] generated, and thence wafted
to wealthier streets; our humanity maybe shocked by this very slight and
imperfect sketch, which aimed, not so much at a statistical account of Rookeries,
as at a description of their effects, which has been, perhaps, rather an
historical essay than a sanitory report.
All, however, agree in this-the remedy is difficult. Though why
should it be thought so? Why not hope better things of our national
character - generous in the extreme, kind, sympathising, charitable?- of our
land, the hospitable refuge for distressed foreigners; the rich spending much
of their incomes in a wise benevolence, the merchant and the noble often vying
in generous ardour to surpass one another, in the number of their charities;
most men thinking they are bound to do something for the poor, many giving a
considerable portion of their income in charitable donations, notwithstanding
the many private claims upon them. Would to God they would consider this vast
social question! that they would superintend their own property, instead of
committing it to needy Middle-men, and leaving to their tender mercies the
dearest interests of their poorer brethren: they little know or think how much
misery is caused by their neglect and even ignorance, their subservience to bad
custom and unhallowed tradition; so that, because the Fathers did wrong, the
sons cannot emancipate themselves from the paternal trammels. Therefore working
men tell you, in tones of the greatest earnestness, that they had rather have
any landlords, than men [-218-] from their own class, whose natures have been
changed by a long course of oppression. And what shall we say to those who are
the owners of large factories, makers of steam engines, &c., men who employ
commonly at one time five or six hundred workmen, some double or even treble
that number; if these men were sensible of their duty, would they not form
little colonies, in which those employed by them would be decently lodged, with
some attempt, too, at innocent relaxation, when the business of the day was
done? Is it just or right thus to bring together large bodies of men, merely to
wring from them, at a certain price, a certain amount of labour, and then to
consign them and their families to Rookeries? Are not the consequences in the
prospective fearful, with our teeming population and increased intelligence ? Is it not the grossest selfishness, or the
most criminal indifference, thus to treat men as draught horses, or beasts of
burden? And shall we be checked by a homily, on the danger of interfering with
capital? What is capital to the value of men's bodies and souls? Can they be
put in competition by the Legislature? Although, if we spoke to individual
avarice, we have little doubt to which side the balance would incline.